I Never Gave My Consent

by Holly Archer

‘Please,’ he said. ‘Just let me give you this. I won’t even take the number.’

  But I was already picking up the pace, walking away as fast as I could.

  In the end, my escape came gradually. I was still seeing Beaver a lot and I still struggled to accept he wasn’t really my friend, even when he took me to Birmingham one night and tried to sell me to some men he’d met in a casino. Even though he now had Maria, Kev still took me out whenever he could. I suppose, in the end, I realised the only option was to move away.

  Before that, the inevitable happened. Omar broke up with me. He told me it wasn’t working and I told him to fuck off. Within weeks, he was going out with someone else. I just didn’t care. There was a time when I’d have been devastated, but now I just wanted to leave Telford and all of its bad memories behind.

  I looked online and found a room to rent in Birmingham. It wasn’t as far away as I’d have liked, but at least it wasn’t Telford. Carly agreed to come with me and share the room, so we could save money on rent. I eventually did as the taxi driver said and got a new sim card, although I was too scared to throw the old one away just yet.

  I worked a variety of shop jobs and I went on some dates, but I didn’t know how to behave around men who hadn’t paid for me, so I often ended up sleeping with them on the first night – but this was far better than being bought and sold and at least I got to choose this time.

  It was around six months before I met Sanjeev in an internet chatroom. He was an Indian medical student in Scotland and we gradually started talking and getting to know each other. He respected me and it was ages before we even met in person, never mind slept together.

  By this time, it was getting a bit much sharing a room with Carly every night, and when Sanjeev got his first job, in Oxford, I moved there with him and worked in Waitrose. It felt so good to be miles away from home and, for a while, I imagined we’d grow old there, just Sanjeev and me against the world.

  At this time, I was barely speaking to anyone in my family, apart from Gemma. She was the only one who didn’t seem spooked by how much I’d been through and we could actually talk quite openly about it. Liam was another story, however. He didn’t want to know about any of it. I guess he couldn’t handle the idea of something so horrific happening to his little sister, so he pretended it hadn’t happened at all. I knew things were hard for him, but it really drove a wedge between us.

  As for Mum, I suppose I was a bit resentful towards her. I knew she loved me and that she hadn’t known what I was going through, but for a few years I was very angry at her and I felt like she should have picked up on the signs. We kept in touch and I popped home for birthdays and at Christmas, but I rarely phoned home unless it was an emergency and I’d use any excuse for not being in touch.

  Sanjeev and I were together for a year and a half and most of it was happy. I did tell him about my past, but I said I’d been a prostitute because I still didn’t really understand what had happened. Eventually I think it drove a bit of a wedge between us, because Sanjeev didn’t really understand either and I was still very much wrestling with all of my demons and waking up in the middle of the night, gripped by nightmares. Gradually we drifted apart and, after just over eighteen months, we broke up.

  Although it didn’t work out, the relationship did help me get far away from Telford for long enough to put a stop to the hell that had become my life. The split wasn’t too awful and I decided I felt strong enough to move back to Birmingham and apply for university. I decided I’d do business studies instead of tourism. I guess part of me still wanted to be an air hostess, to travel the world and to see things I’d dreamed of the very first time I’d got on that plane to Majorca. But, unsurprisingly, I’d lost my confidence. I’d even gone as far as getting an application form for an airline, but I lost my nerve at the last minute. It was my dream, but what if I was bad at it? I just couldn’t cope with the idea of failing at it.

  But before I did, there was just one more thing I had to do. I went home to Telford and put my old sim card back in my phone. As soon as it registered, the phone beeped with two-year-old messages from Beaver and Kev and lots of others.

  I felt like the same girl in some ways, but I was a little stronger now. For all Sanjeev had struggled with what I’d told him, he’d shown me that I was worth more than the price these men had put on my head.

  I’m not sure how I found the guts to do what I did next, but I dialled Beaver’s number. When he answered, I didn’t say hello or ask him how he was. Instead, I said: ‘I want you to give me some money, or I’m going to tell your wife everything.’

  19

  Moving On

  The tables had turned with Beaver and it felt good.

  As soon as I threatened him he came to meet me straight away and pretty much offered to give me anything I wanted. He still had the same car and, as it crawled up to the side of the road near Mum’s, the smell of pizzas wafted from the windows. When he got out, he was already counting out a wad of notes.

  ‘Holly!’ he said. ‘Please, I will give you money but don’t tell her. Please.’

  It wasn’t really about money, though. It was about power. He looked so pathetic as he begged me not to say a word that I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for him. I quickly turned and left, though. There was no way I was falling into the trap of becoming his friend again. A few days later, I left and my new life began, though the old one still cast a dark shadow.

  When I moved to Birmingham, I met another Indian man, Indu. We worked in Tesco together and he was kind, caring and funny. We started dating soon afterwards and, a few years later, I fell pregnant. This time there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to go through with the pregnancy. An abortion just wasn’t even an option. From the second the two blue lines appeared on the test, I loved that baby with all my heart. Unlike my two teenage pregnancies, I started to picture her little face and think of what I might call her, of the songs I might sing to her and the games we might play together.

  It meant I had to give up university, which was a shame, as I had been doing well, but I needed to make this little person my focus. My pregnancy was also the best thing that could have happened to me in terms of my relationship with my family. As soon as I told Mum, she was over the moon at the prospect of being a grandmother, and the girls, teenagers by now, couldn’t wait to be aunties, as they thought it seemed really cool and grown-up.

  Mum and I didn’t have a big heart-to-heart about what had happened. We just accepted that we were going to be in each other’s lives a bit more again and that was that. It was easier that way.

  Nine months later, little Charlotte came along. As I stroked the tiny covering of dark hair on her head, and held her soft wrinkled hand in mine, my heart swelled with love. She was quite simply the most beautiful baby girl I’d ever seen in my life.

  It was only then that I really thought about my own mum, and how she must have felt the same all those years ago when she took me in her arms for the first time, knowing nothing of what would happen to me in years to come. I already had so many hopes and dreams for this little baby, yet I’d brought her into a world where such evil existed. I vowed there and then to protect her as much as I could and to try to make the world a better place for her to live in.

  Many of the men who’d raped me had daughters, too. Had they cradled their own little girls in their arms like I had? I was someone’s little girl. How could they do what they did to someone else’s baby, knowing they had one of their own?

  Sadly, my relationship with Charlotte’s dad broke down. There were a number of reasons and it’s still quite strained. The long and short of it was, I decided to move back to Telford, to be closer to my family. I knew things would be better for Charlotte if we had Mum and my sisters and the rest of our support network around us.

  Shortly before I moved back, the police had tracked me down as part of something called Operation Chalice. They were investigating claims of sexual abuse, rape and trafficking against a n
umber of men in the area, mainly Pakistanis. Someone, I’m not sure who, had given them my name when they made inquiries. It took them months to track me down because, even in Birmingham, I had a habit of moving around a lot, still scared that one or more of my abusers would catch up with me and my life would unravel. In the early days, before Charlotte, I’d moved on average every six months, always looking over my shoulder.

  When the police spoke to me, I agreed to be interviewed. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I thought it was best to give it a go. I’m not quite sure what happened but going back over the events of those awful days awakened strange feelings inside me. I told the police about Kev, and the officers looked at each other in shock, as he hadn’t even been on their radar. I started to wonder if they’d just buried their heads in the sand because it had been simply too big a problem and they couldn’t deal with it. How could they not have known? He was trafficking children so brazenly around the town, touting his services in takeaways and in the bookies. Were the police really so thick they hadn’t noticed?

  I really wanted to tell them all about Mr Khan, but I’m afraid to say they didn’t seem too interested because they’d already picked him up on other charges. It was a very confusing time. I suppose the officers had a duty to prepare me for what I might face in court, so they tried to demonstrate to me what it might be like having all different barristers cross-examine me, telling me I was a liar and that I’d made it all up.

  We had a bit of a mock trial and it was completely and utterly soul-destroying. I’m not ashamed to say I just couldn’t cope with it. I doubt very few victims could. It’s like reliving the worst days of your life over and over again, but this time it wouldn’t be just the perpetrators sneering at me, it would be well-spoken men and women in wigs, too.

  It’s a difficult one, because I agree that everyone should be entitled to a fair trial if our justice system is to work — and part of that involves having a lawyer — but I can’t help but think there must be another way for girls like me to get justice.

  After we were done, I was in a very dark place for a few days. Although the horrors of the abuse would never leave me completely, I no longer spent every waking hour wishing I was dead, and I now had a life I actually quite liked.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ I told the police. ‘I can’t go through this. I’m sorry.’

  ‘We think you’re really valuable to this case,’ one officer said, when I explained my decision. ‘Won’t you think about reconsidering?’

  But my mind was made up. I honestly felt like if I took that stand — and my abusers were lined up in the dock — I’d become suicidal again. I didn’t just have my own life to think of — I had Charlotte to consider and I was a single mum. She needed me to get out of bed in the morning and feed her and clothe her and cuddle her. Could I do all of those things if I was crippled by the depression and fear that had almost claimed my life as a teenager? It just didn’t seem worth the risk.

  And what if they were found not guilty? It had been so long — what if there wasn’t enough evidence? What if they all got off and then came looking for me? Would they still want to set my house on fire? Would they go after Charlotte?

  Don’t get me wrong — I have enormous respect for survivors of sexual abuse who stand up in court and testify against their perpetrators, but I don’t think those who choose not to are necessarily weaker. We all face our battles in different ways and, until you’ve walked a mile in our shoes, you can’t possibly say how you’d deal with what we’ve been through.

  Instead of going through the courts, I decided to fight child sexual exploitation in another way. I started to blog about my past and I attended charity events, speaking to other survivors and sharing my story with them and with professionals. Eventually I got a job with a local charity in Telford that works with girls who are being abused like I was.

  I don’t want to talk about their cases. I’d never breach their confidentiality, and their stories aren’t mine to tell. But I do try to persuade them that there is light at the end of the tunnel and it is possible to come out the other side. I only hope they believe me. Perhaps, if there had been a service like that when I was in the throes of abuse, it might have helped me understand my situation a bit better.

  Now, I’ve met a new man. By the time you read this, I’ll have given birth to my second child. It wasn’t planned, more of a pleasant surprise, but I’m looking forward to it and Charlotte can’t wait to have a little brother or sister.

  For a long time, I couldn’t see my future but now I’m living it — and that’s something I feel very proud of.

  Epilogue

  If you see me in the street today, I look like any other woman in Telford. To the naked eye, I’m no different from the next working mum trying to make ends meet. Perhaps you’ll see me on the school run, straightening my daughter’s tie as she bounds through the gates, full of the joy and innocence that every child should feel for as long as they possibly can. Or maybe you’ll see me rushing around town after a hard day’s work, pushing my trolley around the supermarket, thinking of packed lunches and evening meals.

  But behind closed doors, in the dead of night, I dream that I’m back there.

  Sometimes, I dream that Andy or Mr Khan has come for my sisters like they promised, and their piercing screams are so real that I sit bolt upright in bed, begging for them to be let go. Other times I dream my house is on fire. I can see the flames and taste the smoke. The images flashing through my head are so powerful that there have been many times I’ve woken up drenched in sweat, shaking in utter terror.

  The fear never goes away — you just have to learn to live with it, to piece your life together as best you can.

  I suppose it doesn’t help that so many of my abusers are still so close at hand.

  Shortly after I left Telford, Mr Khan was convicted of raping a fifteen-year-old girl he picked up on the street, and indecently assaulting a woman in her early twenties. I didn’t know who either was, but my heart ached for them as I imagined his horrible breath on their faces and his dirty hands grabbing their hair in the back of his cramped little car. He’s been released now, and I still see him on the street, evil still shining out of his black eyes.

  After I left for Birmingham, Beaver moved on to other girls. I heard on the grapevine that he sold them to his friends and colleagues, a bit like Kev had sold me. He was eventually picked up by the police and when he appeared in court on charges of controlling a child prostitute — I still loathe that term, as I believe there is no such thing, but that was the official wording — he pleaded guilty, as there was too much evidence stacked up against him. He was jailed.

  Operation Chalice finally came to court in 2013, nearly three years after the police had first tried to track me down in Birmingham. Ali, or Mohammed Ali Sultan, was jailed for seven years. When he became an adult, he graduated from selling phone numbers to abusing teenage girls himself, except now he was an adult and they were still children. He admitted having sex with two teenage girls, one of whom was just thirteen at the time.

  Mubarek Ali, who threw the bottle of piss at me when I refused to give him a blow job, was jailed for fourteen years. His brother, Ahdel, got eighteen. They were convicted of sexually abusing and trafficking four teenagers.

  No one ever got Andy. I’m not surprised. Few girls would testify against a man who turned up outside their houses in the dead of night, threatening to murder their families as they slept, quietly reminding them of Lucy Lowe and what happened to her. He only needed to say her name and he’d strike fear into the heart of every girl in the town. I suspect he’s still abusing girls in the most horrific way.

  I’m not sure what became of Natalie, as we were never really proper mates, but he has probably picked up another vulnerable teenager and persuaded her to help him recruit younger girls as part of his utterly depraved little game. Who knows if he’ll ever get caught?

  As for Kev, he died suddenly last year. A friend of a friend saw that Na
dia had posted news of his demise on Facebook. Beneath his photograph were scores of tributes from friends of the family, saying what a good man he had been, and how he’d be reunited with the love of his life, Liz, who’d died a few years earlier, after years of battling her condition.

  The thing that made me most incredulous was seeing someone bleating on about what a great Muslim he was. I almost laughed. I don’t claim to be an expert on Islam, but I do know it’s supposed to be a peaceful religion and it certainly does not condone, never mind advocate, selling vulnerable young girls for sex for your own financial gain.

  So Kev went to his grave without any remorse for what he did to me, or to God knows how many other girls. I’d hazard a guess that he was still trafficking girls to the day he died. I still see some of the men he took me to on the street. The Chinese man with the posh house often shuffles past me, eyes to the ground, as he walks through town with his wife.

  I’ve never seen Lisa around, so I’m not sure if she still lives in the area, or if she and Kev were still together when he died. I do think of her sometimes, and I wonder if she has any remorse for the part she played. Sure, she wasn’t there when Kev drove me around and offered me up to the highest bidder, but her comfortable lifestyle depended on men wanting to buy my body and she never did anything to stop it. Saif will be a teenager now and I do wonder what he’s turned out like. Hopefully he’s very different from his half-brothers.

  Speaking of the rest of the family, I’m not sure what’s become of Imran or Farooq, but I can’t imagine their view of women has changed much. I suppose I feel a little bit sorry for the girls — when I saw Nadia’s post, I did wonder if she’d ever had any inkling of how her dad really made his money.

  And what of the girls? Carly and I sort of drifted apart after I moved to Oxford with Sanjeev. We didn’t fall out or anything, we just gradually stopped speaking as much as we once had. I hate to say it, but I started to realise we didn’t actually have that much in common. We were just bound together for so long by a situation that neither of us had chosen. Eventually, she moved abroad and, although we speak occasionally, we’re nowhere near as close as we once were. I suppose when I think of her now, I think of the most painful time in my life and it’s hard to get past that, as much as it’s not her fault.